ABSTRACT
George Bernard Shaw provocatively voices turn-of-the-century male anxiety over the reversal of traditional nineteenth-century gender codes: man is now the pursued object, woman the pursuer. Turning to the Spanish women writing in the first decade of the twentieth century, this chapter looks at three authors who explore ways to give voice and body to the Modern Woman. The three novels compose variations on the Modern Woman in fiction; each shapes the discourses of the female body in ways that refigure the body as textuality. Two of the authors, Concepcion Gimeno de Flaquer and Emilia Pardo Bazan, are a full generation older than Unamuno and Valle-Inclan; the third, Carmen de Burgos, is their contemporary. As a Modern Woman, Maria Luisa shares the language, goals, and gender ideology of her admirer, the poet-legislator, rather than the values and lifestyle of her female friends. Francisco Lina attempts to master the discourses of sexuality that subordinate women in ignorance of the body.
